Conventional illumination design systems typically require significant computing resources and time to properly compute lighting patterns on target surfaces or regions. FIG. 1, for example, is a screen shot of a user interface 10 illustrating a conventional technique for simulating illumination patterns. This technique includes projecting sampling rays from a light source point 101 toward a target surface 102. The sampling rays can be refracted, reflected, scattered, or diffracted by objects 103, 104, 105, and 106. As shown in FIG. 1, for example, the object 103 is a lens with an array of hexagons, the object 104 is a spheroid, the object 105 is a cylinder, and the object 106 is a cuboid. In order to simulate an illumination pattern of the light source 101 on the target surface 102, conventional simulation techniques typically require tracing a large number of sampling rays (e.g., five million sampling rays) to get an idea of the light pattern on the target surface 102. Such techniques can be inefficient, costly, and require significant computing resources and processing time.
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